The first paper was presented by Virginia Paque from Argentina, who stood in for a DiploFoundation colleague, Alfonso Avila, on his paper, “Identity Theft in Developing Counties' Banking Industry.” This fascinating paper raised the issues about the far-reaching impact of identity theft, and addressed the perspective that identity threats and phishing scams are coming primarily from developing countries. Paque presented empirical evidence that the vast majority of identity theft scams are coming from the developed countries (with only Nigeria and South Africa figuring at all). IGP Partner Milton Mueller, from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, presented his paper on, “Net Neutrality as a Global Norm for Internet Governance,” simultaneously released as an IGP Issue Paper. Dr. Mueller re-defined Net Neutrality and sketched its progression from national policy spaces to global spaces. Leo Van Audenhove from the Department of Communication Studies at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, presented an empirical co-authored paper on the mechanisms for regulation and self-regulation in the cultural industries. Finally, Adilson Cabral, from the Universidade Federal Flumienense, presented a co-authored paper entitled, “Broadening Voices: Grassroots Tech Groups and Policy Objectives for Internet Governance.”
Audience questions included questions about how can national Net Neutrality principles coexist at the global level; how do we deal with the coordination issues at a global level; how do we deal with the issue of Google as a dominant player in this space?